What are some basic rules for recycling?

Recycling

Re-use is better than recycling.

After that, avoid contamination. Putting the wrong kind of material in can ruin the whole batch, rendering not only your effort but the effort of many other people a waste. Pay attention to what your hauler wants. Usually it's important to keep the PETE away from the LDPE and such. Other things they don't care about. I used to have to separate all the glossy paper out of the newspaper. Where I live now, it all goes in the same bin with the cardboard.

I think you should also pay attention to what's worth recycling. Aluminum is a no-brainer, cardboard is easily worth the trouble, newspaper is a toss up. But it costs far more to recycle glass than it's worth (even without counting the environmental cost of burned diesel fuel = dangerous particulates in the air and greenhouse gasses), so it's really doing everyone a favor to re-use if possible, throw it away if you can't.